Proper 8b: St. Alfred's

 

title: Proper 8b Sermon
subtitle: Fr. Dale
author: St. Alfred's Church
date: June 29, 2024

The collect

The collects we pray at the beginning of the liturgy have a particular form. By the way it is not entirely clear how we get the word "collect". It might have to do with a prayer that collects the gathered people. It might be from an old Latin word that means "gather the people." We know that in the word with bad associations in the old socialist term: "Collective".

1. Addressing the prayer to God.
2. Noticing a particular act, normally some aspect of glory, that God has done or is doing.
3. Spelling out a particular request or petition for grace. Usually there is a "colon" at the beginning of this 3rd part of the collect.
4. There is also usually a 4th part which identifies the desired result of the request.
5. Concluding with a signature, the bearer of the prayer, (In the name of Christ ...) (the name of the Trinity ...) and so on

Many years ago I carried with me a serious fear of not being able to respond when someone asked me to pray. They frequently ask clergy to do that you know. I found it helpful to think about the prayer in the terms I've just outlined. Who are we talking to? What are the credentials of this person we're praying to? What are we asking for? And then sign off.

Keep in mind the prayers of petition are only one kind of prayer. Some of you have journeyed with Mary Pat these past months in discovering the power of contemplative prayer. That kind of prayer takes a different shape.

I have often thought that there was a whole sermon condensed in the collects. Today we started things off with:

1. Almighty God, \
2. you have built your Church upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone: \
3. Grant us so to be joined together in unity of spirit by their teaching,
4. that we may be made a holy temple acceptable to you; \
5. through Jesus Christ our Lord, …

Here we are, gathered on the Sunday leading up to July 4th, Independence Day. Here we are gathered together in the church; the church gathered in the church building; the church of the people built on the foundation of people, Apostles and Prophets, – note it's not not poured concrete;
the church (not the building) has a cornerstone in the form of a person, Jesus Christ. We, the church, a motley crew of people who are nevertheless a holy temple.

Now, I haven't seen very many temples in my life. I've been in some synagogues that had the title temple. I've seen two Mormon temples. I haven't been to Asia where I think there might be lots of temples of various kinds.

Our collect today would have us believe that I'm looking out on a holy temple. Well -- I'll have to think about that.

Foundation

Today's collect tells us that our foundation is apostles and prophets. Apostles are those sent out -- that's what the word means -- sent out after receiving and trusting in the good news of Jesus Christ. Prophets. Messengers of God. Prophets giving voice to God so that we might hear God's voice. So often – or most of the time – we can't hear God's voice, and that's why we need prohets to say it so that we can hear it.

We are here on the shoulders of a countless multitude of those who have gone before. Those who have entrusted their life to the gospel, so much so that they worked and risked so that those who came after would also know and trust in the good news. That's us.

Last week Fr. Peter told us about the distinguishing characteristic of the Gospel of Mark. He said it ends with the women going away afraid and then abruptly ends. As if there is more -- much more -- to come. And included in that more to come – is us.

When it comes to prophets there's a long line of them. Stretching back in time. The first and original prophet was Abraham. The first Patriarch. Moses was regarded as the greatest Prophet. He was prophet and law-giver. In so many ways David is the next greatest Prophet.

One of the benefits of the lectionary we are using currently is that we hear about these early prophets at a depth that we didn't with older lectionaries. As we are listening to passages from first and 2nd Samuel, we are hearing snippets of the riches that are contained in the Hebrew scriptures. Nevertheless, what we actually get in these short lectionary readings is a bare outline of the rich tapestry that is present in the Hebrew scriptures.

The earliest Christians understood Jesus to have been a descendant of David. Jesus was standing on his shoulders. The deep connections the early Christians saw to David are too numerous to mention. The annointing of David is passed down to us in the word messiah – meaning "annointed."

What can we say about this prophet David?

There is scarcely anyone in the Bible who is portrayed with as rich and varied a portrait as David.

Some of the episodes are deeply familiar to us – but they barely scratch the surface. We know the story of David and Goliath -- at least the outlines of it. The reading of it was one of the options last week. We may perhaps remember the calling of David as God's chosen one, the calling marked with an annointing when Samuel went to the house of Jesse. David was a warrior. We might call him a guerilla fighter. He was also known as a musician. He sought influence in the court of king Saul. He also fought with the Philistines when it was to his advantage. A kind of switch hitter? He was in fact aligned with one of the Philistine groups when king Saul and Jonathan were killed.

Today's reading from Samuel picks up at that point in David's story. We hear in the passage mostly about the musician David. He sings this song, translated as the Song of the Bow. The people are directed to sing the song in the morning – lamenting the death of Saul and Jonathan. The song is dripping in irony since David had most recently been a traitor to Saul.

But the irony anticipates the many adventures of David -- related in the 2nd book of Samuel. King of the united tribes of Israel. Making Jerusalem his capital. His calamitous seduction of Bathsheba. Love and battles with his children. David is a real person. And he is the great ancestor and forerunner of Jesus himself.

How wonderful it is that the giants on whose shoulders we stand were themselves real, with flaws and gifts, just like you and me. God works through folks like them – who are folks like you and me.

In our Psalm -- for so long attributed to David himself -- we read or sing:

I wait for the Lord; my soul waits for him; in his word is my hope.

I for one am glad to have David by my side.

Healing business

In the passage from Mark's gospel today, we hear snippets or glimpses of Jesus the cornerstone. We, the holy temple, are measured according to the first measure given in Jesus himself. Jesus the healer. As David was not just one thing, Jesus is more than a healer. But he is a healer. And Mark has given us 2 episodes of Jesus's healing

Talitha cum

 I can hear the voice of the father in today’s gospel reading. Do you know the sound of a father, crying out at his children stolen from him? A father whose daughter is sick unto death?

A “little girl” who stood up after being put down. A young girl raised up as a sign of the Resurrection.

Jesus raised up a little girl, he rewarded her father’s humility in bringing his burden before Jesus. Though he had no children of his own in the biological sense of that word, all children were his. He felt the sorrow of all fathers as he heard the voice of one individual father.

The woman approaching in fear and trembling

… blood that can’t be hidden. In society all too often it has been a focus of shame. It has been a way that men have shamed women. Even to the present day. Men of power have attempted to lord it over women.

She doesn’t want to make a big deal out of it. But she is adamant that Jesus know, that he touch her. Jesus is worthy of the trust she puts in him. He is completely trustworthy in a world where trust has become scarce.

Jesus touches her with compassion, unclean though she be. Outcast that she is, Jesus reaches across the lines of separation.

We who come after

We stand on the shoulders not just of Jesus. We are also inheritors of the faith and trust of that brave father who gave his broken daughter and trusted that she was not dead but sleeping. We are also indebted to that brave woman who stepped forward to touch the hem of Jesus's garment, trusting that that was all that was needed for her own healing. We stand on the shoulders of such as that little girl who stood up to walk again.

Closing

In the coming days we will mark he anniversary of the founding of our country. Like the church, we are inheritors of a deep tradition. As a nation we stand on the shoulders of those who have come before. But these are not apostles and prophets. If we turn them into that, we are treating a nation as if it were a holy temple. When ancient Israel made that same move, the prophets spoke doom to them.

The holy temple is what sits before you. The people of God.

Recent weeks I have heard some members of the congregation wondering how and what we can do in the face of the world's great needs. The good news we are presented with today is that it's not all on us. There is a great cloud of witnesses preceding us and an equal number will follow.

The church united in the Spirit we have inherited from those before, looking for all the world like you and me, is only asked to bear the burden handed down to us. "What can one person do?" a singer asks. We can do what is given to us to do. George MacDonald said nearly 150 years ago:

What God may hereafter require of you, you must not give yourself the least trouble about. Everything He gives you to do, you must do as well as ever you can. That is the best possible preparation for what He may want you to do next. If people would but do what they have to do, they would always find themselves ready for what came next.

Thanks be to God that we do not stand or fall alone. The great cloud of witnesses, with the shepherd gathering and guiding them, accompanies us.

The God of peace, who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus Christ, the great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the eternal covenant: Make you perfect in every good work to do his will, working in you that which is well-pleasing in his sight; (what is the last step of a prayer?) through your Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Easter Vigil, St. Alfred's

 

Easter Vigil 2024 

Dale Hathaway 

March 30, 2024

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Opening

When I was a child I spoke like a child, I thought like a child. When I was a child I experienced Easter pretty much like Fr. Peter shared last Sunday. There was Palm Sunday, with the pomp and procession. Then there was Easter.

When I was a child, I knew my name and I knew that my parents were Helen and Dale. I tolerated my siblings for the most part.

It was only later that I began to realize that one of the great challenges of life was to figure who I really was and who I was meant to be. And it was later still that I began to grasp that it wasn't even about me. I was a part of a larger story.

I was in my 20's when I experienced my first Easter Vigil. We didn't have such a thing when I was a child in the church. I returned to the church, trying to be an adult, and trying to figure out what an adult faith looks like.

I'm still working at that.

I know of no better expression of what adult Christianity is all about than the Easter Vigil.

That first Easter Vigil was for me the first of many that would follow -- up to the present moment. I have come to experience this liturgy as the fullest possible expression of who we are as Christians, as human beings, as children of God. Through the years what we do here tonight has often taken my breath away.

Lighting Fire

The Kilauea volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii was in a continuous eruption from 1983 until 2018. Before we left the islands we had an opportunity to see the eruption at work. We left at dusk on a small ocean-going boat that took us down the coast. As the sun set, the waves that bounced us around were filled with sparkling lights flashing in the water as it splashed against the boat. Our daughter Amy was gleeful because it was like a roller coaster ride.

Finally we began to approach the point where the lava was flowing into the water. It was a dark night. There was a snake trail of red-orange coming down the slope, while several sites along the rocky edge had molten water falls into the surf below. We could feel the heat. What I also felt was awe!

It felt to me like I was entering the dawn of creation. I was somehow present as God was in the act of creating the universe. I felt like I knew whose I was. I somehow belonged to the God of creation.

With this festival of light that we experience on this night, we are called to recognize our kinship with a God of fire and of worlds begotten. But it is not only a creating God, but a God, who gives up himself or herself in a consuming fire.

Fr. Keating has a passage where he sees the light of the paschal candle as a symbol of the profound love that originates in God's own love. It begins with a single point. The fire is lit and then the paschal candle is lit. All the rest of the light that fills a church full of hand candles – it all originates in the one flame. As the light of God's love is spread and flourishes, the original flame does not diminish.¹

Annie Dillard relates a similar awesome image of fire, but this one an intimate picture.

One night she was quietly soaking in the wonders of the creation about her and she saw a moth fly into a candle flame. The moth was caught by the fire, consumed and held. Its wings were immediately ignited like tissue paper, and in an instant they were gone. Most of the moth was quickly consumed, except that there was a shell , a skeleton, there in the bit of the flame. "And that skeleton began to act as a wick. The wax rose in the moth body from her soaking abdomen to her thorax to the jagged hole, where her head should be, and widened into flame, a saffron-yellow flame that robed her to the ground like any immolating monk." ²

This night calls us into relationship with a God who gives all that there is in the divine in order to be in relation to this humble world. The fire calls us each by name and gives us the name of our family. It is the family named Christian.

Exsultet

At the time of Passover in a Jewish household, a sacred meal is held. It’s called a Seder. One of the highlights of that meal is a question that is asked by a child. The child asks, "Why is this night different from all other nights?" When I have lead Seder meals in the past, I have taken particular delight in responding to that question. I say, "I am so glad you asked me that question because that is exactly what I wanted to share tonight.

The answer is the story of the deliverance of Israel from bondage. The answer is our deliverance from bondage. The answer is the powerful answer to, "Who are we? Whose are we?"

That is the story that we share tonight. It is the story of the deliverance of all people from bondage. We hear it put this way in the Exsultet:

this is the night, when all who believe in Christ are delivered from the gloom of sin, and are restored to grace and holiness of life.

The Exsultet we heard sung tonight – and all the best stories are sung -- says in vivid yet mystical language why this night is like no other.

Holy is this night when wickedness is put to flight, and sin is washed away.

This song takes us back to the very origins of human life. This song announces that this is a sacred night. This song announces that tonight we proclaim what it means to be Christian. This song announces for all the world to hear, who we are, and whose we are.

Sacred Story

We have announced then that this is the most important message there is. The story we tell tonight is the most important story there is.

There is space in the liturgy tonight to tell all the fullness of the path from creation to the fulfillment brought about by the resurrection. From the great need for redemption, experienced by our ancient ancestors, and by us on a day-to-day basis, through to the "peace that passes all understanding." Tracing the story up through the prophets, and finally Jesus rising from the dead and sending us the adventures of a new life in anticipation of the final fulfillment.

A woman named Gretchen Pritchard has been telling the sacred story aimed at Episcopalians, especially young Episcopalians, for several decades. I was gifted many years ago with a transcript of her version of the entire Bible told in language appropriate for children . It begins, "Once upon a time". End it ends with, "the prince and princess get married, and live happily ever after". Amazingly, that is a pretty good approximation of the first chapter of Genesis, and the last chapter of the book of Revelation.

At a number of Easter Vigils that I have officiated through the years, we have read that text from Gretchen Pritchard. It is poignant because it helps us keep the very large perspective that this night gives us.

This is the night when Christ broke the bonds of death and hell and rose victorious from the grave.

We are here tonight in Florida in the year of our Lord 2024. But this night takes us back through the millennia to every deliverance experienced by humankind. We are there as well tonight. How holy is this night. - # Baptism

By very ancient custom, this is the night that is most appropriate for baptisms. The baptism of stepping into the pool of water, having shed the clothing of an old life, and emerging, dripping, from the pool, into the new life and new clothes of life in Christ. Our life as Christians begins with that ancient movement.

It is often quoted that we are an Easter people. We are a people who are made out of the consequences of Jesus's Resurrection. We are a people, not just individuals, but a family with the name of Christian. By tradition, baptism was a time when we received a name. Who we are. At the same time we gained a family. Whose we are. Baptism shows us that we are God's people.

Eucharist

I heard a kind of parable many many years ago that told the story of how orthodox Christians understand the basic sacraments of our life as Christians. It was said that when a child is born, there are three basic actions one must take for the sake of the child:

1. first, the child is washed, wrapped in clothes, and given a name.
2. second, the child is fed.
3. third, the child is sheltered and given a home.

These three actions correspond it was said with - baptism, - Eucharist and - confirmation.

Washed in the waters of new life. Fed with the bread of life. And sheltered by the gift of the Spirit.

In the orthodox tradition, all three of those things happen at the same time. So tonight, we hear the sacred story, we see and hear how baptism is the basic calling for all of us, and we are nourished in the sacred body and blood of Christ.

Closing

This liturgy is the first Eucharist of Easter. This liturgy is the third part of one continuous service lasting from Thursday to Saturday night. There are no dismissals after the Maundy Thursday and Good Friday services. What we do here tonight tells a very big story, the biggest of all. It spans the final meal of Jesus with his disciples, the trial and passion of our Lord, and his emergence from the tomb. This night tells the whole story of what it means to be Christian.

Tonight we travel from the dawn of creation: Fire. Through the waters of deliverance: Water. Through to the dawn of a new life in the People of God: Eucharist. This night is truly like no other night.

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1. The daily reader for contemplative living March 21 & 22↩

2. Holy the Firm p. 17↩

Lent 2 2024 -- St. Alfred's

 

Opening

We have entered into another season of Lent. For most of us it is not the first time we've "done Lent". We have followed this cycle year-by-year through the patterns of our lives. If we were to tell the narrative of the Lents that we have kept, we might get a facisimile of the history of our call to life in Christ. At some point we made a decision to follow Christ. At some point we recognized that to be a disciple of Christ it was going to mean molding and fashioning our life to conform to Christ's own life. The cycles of Lent tell something of the story of our call to life in Christ.

It's not linear. It's not a straight line or even multiple ones. There are cycles within cycles. My own life has been marked not just by keeping Lent but by attempting to preach on these lessons year-by-year, Lent by Lent. It is perhaps my task of preaching Lent -- preaching it over and over again -- that leads me to think of the big picture. These well-known passages come around year by year, again and again.

Most of you are aware that the lessons we follow on Sundays focus on one of the 3 synoptic gospels each cycle. Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The Gospel of John is interspersed throughout the 3 years.

Now, within the annual cycle there are smaller cycles.

The Epiphany cycle, which we just concluded, presents us with a snapshot of Jesus' ministry, beginning with his baptism and ending with his Transfiguration. Like our own call to ministry, Jesus's ministry is launched with his baptism.

At the end of Epiphany, we recount Jesus's Transfiguration. It is the point at which the 3 synoptic gospels pivot and focus on Jesus's final journey to his Passion, culminating in the Resurrection. So for us in our journey in the church year we move from the Epiphany cycle to the Lenten cycle, the one that culminates in Easter.

Lent has begun. The cycle of 6 1/2 weeks that might be read as a slow-walk meditation on the way of the cross. It culminates in the Passion. And then -- Easter.

The time that follows Easter, The Easter cycle, lasts 50 days until Pentecost. It explores the meaning and implications of the Resurrection, for the disciples and followers of Jesus in the New Testament, and in the lives of Jesus' followers today – you and me.

Then, after Easter, there is a final cycle, the cycle of weeks from Pentecost until the next Advent. During this season the fullness of life in Christ is explored, with multiple themes and multiple emphases, as the whole task of following Jesus become an interwoven pattern of a cycle within a cycle with a cycle.

We hear these stories over and over again. And we know how each one goes. We know the story. What changes is who we are, how we have changed from last year, and what we make of it.

Sacred time is circular

I have shared with some of you how I can tell when we've had a good liturgy. It's when I can truthfully say, "I'm glad I came." If I can truthfully say, "I'm glad I came", then it's been time well-spent.

Now time is an interesting concept, one that serious thinkers have thought about for thousands of years and still do to this day. There is time that is clock-wise sort of time. Minutes turn into hours and hours into days. The ticking of the clock. That's secular time. It's linear. But then there is sacred time. In contrast to linear time, sacred time is generally circular. It doesn't generally function with a beginning and an ending, but rather flows from beginning to ending and then back again to the beginning. Our church year follows that sort of pattern.

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.¹

One Easter vigil I presided over many years ago lasted for over 2 hours. It was full. There was the of lighting fire. There was a full telling of the sacred story in the Bible. There were baptisms of children and adults in a tub of water where you had to get wet. There was an anointing you could see, fit for a king. There was Eucharist where one felt as if you were at a sacred meal.

Afterward, one of the people in attendance, I think it was a visitor, came up to me and said, "When we got to the end I couldn't believe it was over." For that person it was time well spent. Sacred time isn't measured by a clock.

Life in Christ

The sacred time of our liturgy has the power to bring us face to face with what was time present many centuries ago. Our liturgy brings us face to face with Abraham, Paul, and Jesus. As we enter this cycle of Lent, the liturgy presents us with utterly iconic scenes from the prophets and the evangelists. It has the potential to make us present with them in sacred time.

Abram faced such a new and sacred reality in the passage from Genesis we heard today. He was 99 years old and the LORD showed up at his doorstep and announced a covenant with him. His life changed with new requirements and – as a sign of the changed life – a new name. Sacred time has the potential to bring us into the presence of God and to so transform us that we are as new people.

The evangelist today relates a teaching moment in Jesus's life: "the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, ..." He's talking to disciples – those who regard themselves as wanting to follow Jesus. That would be you and me as well as Peter, James, Thaddeus and the rest. It has the potential to confront us with the reality that our life in Christ is about suffering, and rejection, death, and then ultimately resurrection.

We hear these narratives over and over again. We know how they begin and we know the end. That's not the challenge of them. The challenge for us is to open ourselves to that sacred time where we are transformed. It is not a one-off experience.

My own life experience suggests that each day I enter a new set of challenges to being a disciple of Christ. Each day I have to start at the beginning and go to the end. But sometimes I can actually hear Jesus say to me, "Follow me." Each time we meet these texts we are different from the last time. Whether it's day by day or week by week, I am in need of continual renewal, I must be called again and again to life in Christ. Such is the power of sacred time. We are able to hear the voice of the Lord in sacred time.

Lent aims us squarely at the Passion of the Lord and the 3rd day reversal of the Resurrection. Lent pursues the implications of following Jesus to the cross. We hear Jesus tell us that directly in today's reading:

If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.

Peter voices an initial resistance to doing such a thing. We can easily voice the same thing. "Jesus, you don't really mean that, do you?"

Jesus began to teach his disciples that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.

This being a follower of Jesus thing we are called to is the way of suffering.

Suffering

Suffering there is bound to be for Peter and the disciples. Bound to be because suffering is pretty much a universal experience. Actually, I think it is universal. Everyone suffers. That was the beginning of Gautama Buddha's experience and it is the lynch-pin of the Buddhist way. When I would ask my religion classes full of 18 year olds, "Is it true that we all have had the experience of suffering?" I often get a kind of blank look from some of them, while others readily nodded their head, "Yes." I think the hesitation was probably because they had never really reflected on it. When I look out at you I don't doubt that you all know what I'm saying about suffering. It's around all of us.

Jesus began to teach his disciples that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.

Jesus suffered (that's what the word "Passion", Latin patior, means in this context). And he invites us to "take up our cross to follow him." That's a part of what the invitation to keep a holy Lent is about, to focus our lives on the task at hand. To enter into the way of the passion of Jesus.

But suffering is not an attractive thing. It's not an inviting thing. Typically we want to avoid it. Look at Peter's response. What do we do with this invitation?

Does Jesus' suffering make it all ok for the rest of us? Does Jesus' suffering offer a kind of redemption to each of us in our own suffering? Where is the redeeming value of suffering – for us? For Jesus?

There are no simple responses. The suffering which is on our path one year may look very different the next. The suffering for some is very different from the suffering of another. Jesus is found in all of the suffering. He invites us to participate. We are invited in to life in Christ.

We know how Jesus's story ends. He invites us into that as well.

Our end is our beginning

ὁδὸς ἄνω κάτω μία καὶ ὡυτή.²

The way up and the way down are one and the same, said a Greek philosopher 500 years before Christ.

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.

We have entered into this Lent. We do know how the story ends. We've been here before. We will give our best shot at embracing the way of the cross. We will fail. And we will meet the Risen Lord in glory. It will fade. And we will return next year to hear the story as if it were new. The sacred story goes on and on by going round and round.

We enter the sacred story. We have made a beginning of it. It's done. There's no undoing it. And in the end, as that poet and the mystic before him put it, "All shall be well. All manner of thing shall be well."

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1. T.S. Eliot "Little Gidding"↩

2. Heraclitus ca. 500 bce↩